Little Palm Theater Polishes Its New Act

BOCA RATON - — Veteran actor Justin Carr took the stage on Saturday, playing one of his most challenging roles to date: a rat.

No, not a cad who leaves his wife and four children in the final scene. For the next four weekends, Justin is portraying a real rodent, Templeton the Rat, in the Little Palm Family Theatre production of Charlotte's Web.

"There's a lot you can do with Templeton. He usually acts really mean, but then sometimes he'll do nice things for the others," said Justin, who at the age of 13 has appeared in 16 plays. His favorite role so far has been Percy Pig in another Little Palm offering, The Three Little Pigs.

"I play a lot of animals," he said. Charlotte's Web is the first production after the reorganization of the Little Palm Theater Company, which includes children and adult actors in storybook-styled dramas. A cast of 25 presented the fable of a scholarly spider and her porcine friend to a young audience at the Jan McArt Royal Palm Dinner Theatre in Boca Raton.

These patrons of the arts, average age 6, stood on the tables, whispered through Charlotte's death soliloquy, and otherwise thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

"At least, I think they enjoyed themselves," said Kay Kinsey, who came with her two somewhat restless but well-behaved children - Halle, 3, and Gage, 5. "I want to expose them to this so they can develop some theater manners."

Saturday was an astonishing comeback for a company that seemed dead only a month ago.

Little Palm Theatre owed $46,000 to creditors, including back payroll taxes to the Internal Revenue Service, monthly rent to its landlord and back pay to support people such as costumers.

A theater company that already was surviving hand to mouth kept adding creditors to the list. Finally it folded, after three of five board members resigned when they couldn't get answers to questions about the extent of the theater's debt.

When the curtains closed on Dec. 31, the last day of Babes in Toyland, the first children's theater company in the Boca Raton area died. But only two weeks later, a group of determined parents began to resurrect the theater.

They persuaded McArt, owner of the Royal Palm Dinner Theatre, to produce the first play. They persuaded the IRS to sell them the old Little Palm Theatre's assets and talked the theater's former landlord into cutting them a break on a new lease agreement. The parents also formed a new nonprofit corporation and gave the theater company a new name: The Little Palm Family Theatre.

And they resumed rehearsals of Charlotte's Web, the play next on the slate of dramas the company was supposed to perform.

"I knew it would come about. I knew it wouldn't take that long. It means a lot to a lot of people. Parents have seen their children grow through Little Palm," said Joanne Morell, director of Charlotte's Web. "It was hard on my cast members, but they all kept their faith and stiff upper lip and tried to have a positive attitude."

And most importantly, the new theater company is trying to establish a financial base so it will never have to scrape by as the old theater did.

The goal is to raise $100,000 by year's end. Instead of relying on ticket sales and occasional sponsorships of productions, the new company will pursue ways to raise money, its organizers say.

"We've got to make sure we don't fall into the same category where we have creditors," said Bob Altner, one of the parents. "We want to be a professional organization so artists don't have to worry about getting paid. '' Altner and Leon Rubin, another parent who joined the old theater's board of trustees only six months before it folded, were key players in getting the new company started.

The new board includes an attorney and an accountant. The company's financial records will be open to examination, something Rubin said was a problem with the previous theater.

The board's short-term goal includes putting on plays, re-establishing the summer camp program and providing field trips for schoolchildren, starting next fall.

They drew the support of people such as Miami attorney Mark Feinstein, whose children are not yet participants in the theater. His law firm will partially finance a production of Pocahontas in March.

"Bob was instrumental in saying we don't want to see this thing go down, in trying to resurrect it," Feinstein said. "Under his tutelage, it's going to come back. There's no question in my mind this is going to get off the ground."

The new company inherits a legacy from the old one that dates to 1978. McArt joined with William "Doc" Peterson to found the Little Palm. Five years later, she relinquished her role and Peterson continued on until his death in 1991.

Down the road, a long, long time from now, the theater would like to establish its own home, instead of relying on spare hours at the dinner theater.

"We are very grateful to Jan McArt for opening her home to us," Altner said. "We want to put money away for a construction campaign. We want a facility that can operate seven days a week. That's a very long-term goal."

And they have enough confidence to declare an even more ambitious goal: becoming a model for children's theater in the United States.

"South Florida is such a mecca for the arts. Look at what's going on in theater from Coconut Grove to West Palm Beach," Rubin said. "There are other children's theaters, but they don't go back as far. We have the potential."